E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)
"E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)"
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Episode Information
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"E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)", also known as "E-I-E-I-D'oh", is the fifth episode of the eleventh season of The Simpsons.
Contents
Plot
The Simpsons go to a movie theater to see The Poke of Zorro. Afterwards Homer, imitating Zorro, frightens Snake away by challenging him to a duel by slapping him with a glove, he starts to use his dueling glove to get anything he wants from people. First up is Moe, for calling him "heavyset" but after a slap, he gives Homer a free beer. Thus begins a montage to the tune of "Glove Slap" a parody of The B-52's song "Love Shack". When a gun-toting, Southern colonel actually accepts Homer's challenge, Homer finds himself bound to a duel at dawn the following day. The colonel and his wife set up camp outside the house in his RV, awaiting the duel.
With Homer fearing for his life, the family sneak out and search for a temporary home. Along the way they spy Jimmy Carter's Habitat for Humanity: Homer calls Carter a lazy bum, who responds by pulling off his glove to slap him, as Homer has been doing. They find Grampa's old farmhouse on Rural Route 9 outside of Springfield, where they decide to live and, despite the land's poor reputation for growing crops, Homer becomes a farmer.
Homer calls Lenny and requests that he send plutonium to make the crops grow "real big, real fast". They do eventually grow, but since Homer scattered seeds indiscriminately, his main crop is tomacco, a mix of tomato and tobacco, which tastes bitter but is very addictive. It is such a success that executives from Laramie Cigarettes offer to buy the rights to Tomacco for $150 million.
Homer rejects the offer as insulting, demanding $150 billion for tomacco, which they refuse to pay. Dumped back at the farmhouse, the family see tomacco-addicted animals from other farms eating their crops. Homer saves the last plant, but when the rest of the animals attack the house, he tosses it into the air and it lands right into the hands of a Laramie executive.
The Laramie executives' helicopter leaves, but a tomacco-addicted sheep has sneaked on-board and creates mayhem, causing the helicopter to fly out of control and crash, destroying the final tomacco plant and killing the executives (though the sheep is shown to survive). With all the tomacco crops gone, the Simpsons return to Springfield, forgetting that the Colonel is still there. The Colonel shoots Homer in the arm, but Homer says he'll only go to the hospital after he tries some of Marge's mincemeat pie.
Continuity
The Simpson's house on Rural Route 9 burned down in the episode "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy" (season 6), yet it is still there in this episode. One of the official Simpsons episode guide books, The Simpsons Beyond Forever!: A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family ...Still Continued, claims that this episode must take place before the season 6 episode. Either that, or the Rural Route 9 house was saved by the local fire department in said episode.
Trivia
- Inspired by the episode, Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon actually created tomacco; both plants are members of the Nightshade family and are therefore similar enough to create a hybrid.
- Plutonium is shown as a glowing green liquid even though it is a dull silver metal with a melting point of 1183 degrees Fahrenheit. However, radioactive materials are often depicted as glowing green in popular culture.
Cultural references
- The Buzz Cola advertisement shown before the movie is a parody of Saving Private Ryan, directed by Steven Spielberg.
- The movie the Simpsons see, The Poke of Zorro, is a parody of The Mark of Zorro, The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Other films that are playing in the cinema's are "My dinner with Jar Jar", "Mars needs towels", "That 70's Movie", "Shakespeare in Heat", "Facepuncher IV", and " Das Booty Call".
- The "Glove Slap" montage song is a parody of "Love Shack" by The B-52's.
- The farmer using an elephant to measure the height of his stalks of corn is in reference to a song in the musical Oklahoma!, wherein the corn "is as high an elephant's eye".
- The Tomacco-craving animals trying to break into the barricaded farmhouse recall the zombies from George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.
- The Simpsons farming montage music is the theme song from Green Acres.
- When the Southern colonel shows up at the Simpsons' house to duel, he says "Sir, I say sir!" much like cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn. He also has a similar accent.
- The Southern colonel's RV has mudflaps of him drawn like Yosemite Sam.
- The scene with Homer worrying about the duel the next morning whilst looking at a tombstone with his own name on it spoofs the 1990 film Back to the Future Part III.
- The death of the Laramie team in the helicopter, at the hands of a ToMacco-crazed sheep, is a nod to a scene in the James Cameron film Aliens, where the crew of the marines' drop-ship meet the same fate, when an alien sneaks aboard their ship.
